Now, writing in Nature Materials, Miao, Gao, Shen and colleagues report organic light-emitting transistors (OLETs) with remarkably narrow emission, featuring FWHM values as small as 18 nm (red), 14 nm (green) and 13 nm (blue) (Nat. Mater. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02191-0; 2025). The results stem from a joint effort across Chinese and Australian institutions, led by Wenping Hu of Tianjin University

Key advances included subcycle laser development, quantum vortex visualization, and terahertz-based analysis of solar cells — showcasing the benefit of pulsed lasers across a wide range of disciplines.

Over the past decade, the display industry has been driving scientists to make ever-smaller LEDs, with so-called micro-LEDs in demand for next-generation active displays, where each LED, typically on the scale of 10–100 μm in size, serves as a light-emitting pixel. The goal is to reduce the size of these micro-LEDs to allow higher spatial density arrays of pixels while retaining sufficient device brightness

Now, Hyun Suk Wang and colleagues, from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, have demonstrated a light-triggered depolymerization technique that provides a path to better plastic recycling (Science 387, 874–880; 2025). The feat was carried out for PMMA (poly(methyl methacrylate)), a plastic commercialized as plexiglass. With the aid of light, the plexiglass (left image) is broken down into its monomer (right image)

Two-dimensional materials have revolutionized the field of photonics by enabling the manipulation of light at the nanoscale. As their potential continues to grow, we can expect to see more innovative applications emerging in the future.

The correspondence “Increasing diversity in conference speaker programmes” by Polman and colleagues in the December issue of Nature Photonics1 targets an important and timely topic in science and engineering, and specifically in photonics, namely the underrepresentation of minority groups as speakers at conferences. In this piece, they use their collective voice in a call to action to shift underlying

Neuromorphic photonic systems mimicking biological neurons promise to boost the efficiency of light-based computing.

In this Focus issue we highlight a selection of recent developments in super-resolution microscopy.

Super-resolution microscopy offers valuable tools to tackle biological questions. Nature Photonics spoke with Markus Sauer, from the University of Würzburg, about the advantages and outstanding challenges of super-resolution microscopy for biological applications.